08TBILISI957, PUBLIC BROADCASTING AGAIN SERVES AS OPPOSITION BATTLEGROUND

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UNCLAS TBILISI 000957
SENSITIVE
SIPDIS
FOR EUR/PPD, EUR/CARC, AND DRL
E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOVPHUMKDEMKPAOGG
SUBJECT: PUBLIC BROADCASTING AGAIN SERVES AS OPPOSITION BATTLEGROUND
¶1. (SBU) Summary: On May 27 leaders of the United Opposition (UNC)
accompanied by a large contingent of reporters stormed the board of
the Georgian Public Broadcaster (GPB) and the office of the
Director. They presented conflicting sets of demands to the Board,
the Director, and in a following press conference. Finally on June
2, 2008, the board of the Georgian Public Broadcaster (GPB) met the
United Opposition Council's (UNC) demands to air video footage
showing alleged cases of irregularities during the May 21
parliamentary election, devote one hour of live airtime to the
opposition three times a week, and cooperate with a monitoring
group. End summary.
¶2. (SBU) On May 27, the UNC staged a rally outside the GPB premises.
After making speeches at the rally, several opposition leaders went
inside the building and marched into GPB General Director Levan
Kubaneishvili's office unannounced and accused him of fulfilling
marching orders from the authorities.
¶3. (SBU) Chief correspondent of the Reuter's Caucasus Bureau Maka
Antidze was among the journalists who witnessed the protest both
outside and inside GPB building. "Salome Zourabichvili was
screaming at the top of her voice in Levan Kubaneisbvili's office
demanding live broadcasts for the opposition and complaining about
the Georgian Public Broadcaster not having aired live the [six hour
long] opposition rally on May 26," She told PAS privately. She
also said: "The memory of the Rose Revolution and the role Rustavi-2
played by airing live the protest rally in a non-stop mode is still
fresh. No-one cared about professional journalistic standards. It
was a bad precedent. This is why the opposition is so keen on airing
the rallies live. They think it'll work again to bring them to
power - nonsense."
¶4. (SBU) General Director Levan Kubanesivili refuted the
opposition's claims in front of the cameras gathered in his office.
He called for "toning down rhetoric." He also told opposition
leaders that GPB allowed 39 minutes to the opposition's protest
rally on May 26. PAS received from GPB a DVD footage of May 26
hourly newscasts. Each newscast opened with brief live reports from
the rally site bringing an update to the viewers. When Salome
Zourabishvili (of the United Opposition) claimed on GPB's Dgis
Commentary on May 28 that there was insufficient coverage of the
rally the host refuted her claim and showed excerpts of the 42
minutes of coverage the rally received. When faced with this
evidence Zourabishvili walked off the set.
¶5. (SBU) The GPB board currently has eight instead of nine members
after Irakli Tripolski, the chairman of the board resigned on May 27
because of alleged unfair coverage of the May 26 opposition protest
rally. (Mr. Tripolski later changed his mind and decided to stay
only if the board's authority would increase. On May 30 he changed
his mind again and gave his resignation notice to the board. The
opposition welcomed his decision, though the Republican Party called
on him to stay on the board).
¶6. (SBU) Irma Sokhadze, a board member defending the opposition's
interests does not approve of the Chairman's decision to resign. She
thinks the station's programming is improving step by step and will
continue so. She says the pre-election campaign was covered in as
balanced a way as possible; however, she shares the opposition's
complaint about insufficient airtime devoted to May 26 protest
rally. "Between 10:00 a.m. and 12 p.m. we did not have any protest
footage on the air," Irma Sokhadze told PAS in a private
conversation. She also said she was not happy with the "imperative
tone" certain opposition leaders used with the board.
¶7. (SBU) According to the Law on Broadcasting, the President will
nominate the candidates for the parliament to approve the ninth
member of the board. After that, the board will elect the chairman.
Until then, the board remains with five government and three
opposition candidates.
¶8. (SBU) OSCE/ODIHR-led international observation mission said in
its preliminary report that most media outlets remain under strong
influence from their owners and political patrons despite
pluralistic media environment. GPB got the highest marks for
fairness in reporting. The report also said that during last six
weeks of the election campaign, GPB devoted similar time to the
opposition (18%) and the ruling party (17%). GPB was still
criticized for giving positive coverage to the ruling party while
mainly neutral coverage to the UNC.
¶9. (SBU) Mamuka Pachuashvili, a GPB board member told PAS the UNC
members had not submitted their finalized demands officially yet to
the GPB board. Nevertheless, the board accepted the opposition's
demands: a. To air the footage of alleged violations recorded on a
mobile phone. b. To have opposition members
on three-times weekly
live political show Dgis Commentary (Comment of the Day) instead of
the opposition's announcement to get one hour live airtime three
times a week; and c. To cooperate with a monitoring group comprising
a wide range of different civil society, media, academia and
think-tank representatives, instead of the opposition's prior demand
to set up an oversight body over the channel's news programs." Mr.
Pachuiashvili thinks there's nothing new in this agreement as the
GPB has always been responsive to general public's demands.
¶10. (SBU) Comment. Many observers think this fuss is over nothing as
GPB's ratings are not high. The opposition gained public attention
by storming GPB in January and demanding the resignation of the
earlier board and Director. It appears that their attempt to
rekindle public interest in the opposition cause through another
visit to GPB has largely backfired at this point. The good news is
that GPB is further committed to providing a fair platform to all
parties and is increasingly seen as the most neutral forum. End
Comment.
TEFFT

The information recorded on this site has been extracted from http://Wikileaks.org (Georgia) database..

We wish to express our gratitude to Julian Assange and his team for making this data available as it is an important public record.

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